that taps into the Democratic and progressive readers, partially because they have no leaders right now. No one's taking a lead and no one has any backbone, and they see Markos as a leader and as someone who has a backbone."

Whatever you call him, his approach is working. And though he won't say exactly how much he's making, it's working to the point where DailyKos is earning enough money, through advertising, to allow Moulitsas to make a living and even pursue other projects.

One of those projects has him preparing to promote his forthcoming book, "Crashing the Gate."

Cubs fan looks for a win But front and center among the other efforts on an ongoing basis is the SportsBlog network, which Moulitsas launched last year on the heels of the success of an initial baseball site, AthleticsNation. AthleticsNation chronicles the life and times of the Oakland A's baseball team.

Moulitsas himself is still a rabid sports fan. He went to 40 A's games the year before DailyKos took off, and he still indulges himself with DirecTV season passes for Major League Baseball, the NFL and the NBA. He also bicycles regularly and says one of the reasons he chose to live in the Bay Area is because of its abundance of cycling terrain.

"Sports is great, because everyone has an opinion....The big problem (is that) there are not big endemic advertisers for sports like there are for cars or gadgets."

--Jason Calacanis Weblogs Inc. co-founder

Of course, as a Cubs fan, he lives and mostly dies with the fate of that terribly unlucky team. He remembers watching game six of the 2003 National League Championship Series in San Francisco with a roomful of other Chicago partisans--the game in which Cubs fan Steve Bartman interfered with a foul pop-up. As Cubs fans recall, the team went on to blow the game, which, had they won it, would have sent them to the World Series for the first time since 1945.

SportsBlogs is surviving largely on the revenues from DailyKos. It's expanded rapidly, and Moulitsas and business partner Tyler Bleszinski--who's the main blogger on AthleticsNation--hope the network will blossom to include about 100 blogs by year's end.

For now, Moulitsas said, SportsBlogs is somewhat of an experiment. Eventually he hopes to attract advertisers and make the blogs stand on their own, but for now he's hoping the network will grow by itself.

To others who have built successful blogging networks, SportsBlogs is both impressive and worrisome.

"If I was going to launch a blog network right now, I'd pick one (niche area) and own it," said Jason Calacanis, the co-founder of Weblogs Inc., which he recently
sold to AOL for a reported $25 million. "Sports is great, because everyone has an opinion, and there's a lot of people whose voices have not been heard....The big problem (is that) there are not big endemic advertisers for sports like there are for cars or gadgets."

Bleszinski disagreed. He thinks the Pepsis of the world will eventually flock to SportsBlogs as they see the potential for reaching a large, mostly young male audience.

And though not all of the network's team sites are flourishing, some definitely are. The leader is by far AthleticsNation, in part due to Bleszinski's ability to get fans and team executives alike involved. A's general manager Billy Beane, featured in the Michael Lewis book "Moneyball," has given Bleszinski several lengthy interviews.

Most of the other team sites--SportsBlogs features blogs for every big league baseball team except the Los Angeles Dodgers--have not scored such high-level interviews, though the network's Braves site, Talking Chop, succeeded in getting the team's general manager, John Schuerholz to open up.

"The Internet is a part of the media landscape now," Schuerholz told CNET News.com. "So as a general manager, I consider it a responsibility I have, no matter what the vehicle is."

Schuerholz also said that talking to SportsBlogs sites gives teams a way to reach out directly to fans. "It does give you an opportunity to be questioned and respond directly without any unauthorized filtering taking place," he said.

In any case, as Moulitsas and his partners try to make a successful business out of SportsBlogs and as he leverages DailyKos' influence to try to sell books, it's noteworthy that even his ideological opponents think he'll achieve his goals.

"I think (sports) is actually a very clever niche to go into, and I think it'll do well," said Reynolds. Moulitsas "is probably (one of the two) most successful blog entrepreneurs out there. If he ever has any ambition to run for political office, he probably won't be able to do that because he won't be able to afford to take the pay cut."

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